Keywords

Compressor, Oil, Annular-mist Flow, Video processing, OCR

Abstract

This paper presents a non-invasive method to calculate the oil retention and oil circulation ratio (OCR) based on oil film thickness, oil film average velocity, oil droplet size, oil droplet velocity, and system mass flow rate. Oil flow parameters are determined by visualization using high-speed camera and calibrated video processing techniques. The estimated oil retention and oil circulation ratio results are compared quantitatively with the measurements from experimental sampling under different compressor speed. The agreement between video results and sampling measurements verify the accuracy of the non-invasive method, which can be applied in other annular-mist flow analysis. It is also shown that most of the oil exists in film by mass while oil droplets contributes more to the oil mass flow rate because oil droplets travel in a much higher speed.